Of Autism, Murder, and Journos

I’m not officially back. Maybe I am. I don’t know. All I know is that this needed to be said.

There’s news circulating today about a study linking autism and mass murder. You can read it here.

It’s not a terrible study. It might surprise you to hear the mother of a 5 year old on the autism spectrum say that, but I actually don’t have a ton of problems with it. Why? Largely because it spells out its limitations very clearly. The authors reviewed research (and I use this term loosely – you’ll see what I mean if you read it) in order to determine whether mass murderers since 1985 were formally diagnosed as autistic or likely should have been in order to reach their conclusions. They found that 67 of 239 killers researched fit their criteria.

The authors are careful to note this doesn’t mean people on the…